


Time Has Brought Your Heart To Me

by kamrynwhowanders



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Douchebag Michael, Dreamwalking, FYSL Holiday Hellatus Fanwork Exchange, Fluff, Guardian Angel!Lucifer, I'll probably edit this a bunch and repost it, If I remember, Lucifer doesn't go to hell AU, Lucifer wanders the earth for a thousand years, M/M, kind of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-23
Updated: 2014-01-23
Packaged: 2018-01-09 19:01:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1149655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kamrynwhowanders/pseuds/kamrynwhowanders
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Lucifer rebelled, there was silence in the echelons. <br/>"I will not sentence you to Hell," said his Father. "Another me did that in another time and it ended poorly. However, I will send you to wander the Earth until Sam Winchester is born, at which time you will become his guardian, and when he is dead you may come home."</p>
<p>He had not expected to care for the boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Has Brought Your Heart To Me

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a 1500 word drabble about what would happen if Lucifer didn't go to Hell and it turned into a 4000 word guardian angel!fic that is a week late so enjoy that.

  
When Lucifer rebelled, there was silence in the echelons.  
He stood burning in anger and adoration, his Father sitting silent and pained.   
"Lucifer," he exhaled. The sorrow and disappointment in his voice made Lucifer's wings droop slightly. "This is blasphemy, you realise that?"  
Lucifer's wings drooped further.  
"By all rights," he went on. "I should cast you down to Hell."  
Lucifer's wings flared, and he spoke, urgently.  
"Father--"  
"Hush. I'm not going to do that. Another me did that another time, and it did not end well."  
Slowly, Lucifer's wings relaxed.  
"However, what I am going to do is set you to wander on Earth for a few millenia."  
Lucifer's mouth opened, eyes opening wide, speechless.  
"F-father," he faltered.  
"Silence."  
His Father was angry. Lucifer was silent.  
"You have taken an innocent human soul and twisted it for your own, childish ends! You may not speak in your own defense, you have created an atrocity, you have hurt one of those you are supposed to be protecting."  
His Father took a deep breath.  
"You will wander until Sam Winchester is born, after which you will act as his guardian. After the boy's death, you will be able to return to heaven and your family. Do you understand?"  
"Sam Winchester," Lucifer repeated, numbly. "Yes, Father, I understand." He hesitated. "May I say goodbye?"  
His Father's eyes softened.   
"Go on, then."  
Michael was standing cold and proper and angry, and when Lucifer looked at him pleadingly, he turned his face away. Lucifer had disobeyed their Father. He would get no comfort there. The Healer, Raphael, nodded at him, and smiled, a bit wobbily.   
"I will miss your light, brother," he said. Lucifer nodded, and turned to the final brother.  
Gabriel, the youngest of the Archangels, the Messenger, looked back at him and his wings drooped slightly, plastered to his sides, before he barrelled forward to wrap his arms around Lucifer. Gabriel had the most human form of all of them, and, Lucifer sometimes thought, the most human heart. He wrapped his wings tightly around his baby brother, and then disentangled himself, preparing for the fall. He looked over the edge of the great well leading down to Earth, took one last glance over his shoulder at Michael, and let himself tip over the edge. As he fell he heard a scream of sorrow and fury that could only have come from Michael, and as the pain overtook his wings, Lucifer smiled.

He woke up in the middle of a crater in a desert, and blinked. He looked down at his hands, human hands, with five rough, skin-covered fingers, and then down at his body, and suppressed the urge to snarl and tear the skin away until there was nothing but the smooth, fluid, blinding Grace of his true form, because it wouldn't work, and it would only cause him pain. He shuddered, curling in on himself. He was trapped.   
It was hot. He looked up, surprised, and then stood on wobbly legs, wrapping his arms around his shoulders and squeezing. It wasn't painful, exactly, but it wasn't comfortable, and it was overwhelming, baking, making him squint and cover his mouth and nose because of all the sensory input. He screamed with the outrage and horror of his humanity.  
Above him, on the edge of the crater, there were answering shouts, and he looked up as a line of people scrambled their way down the edges. He frowned, and looked up, shielding his eyes with one clumsy hand.  
The people were closer now, and they were shouting words. He frowned, and concentrated, the words resolving themselves into meaning in his head.  
"He has awoken! Praise God!"  
Lucifer drew back his lips in a sneer, turned his back, and spread his wings, ready to fly away. Nothing happened, except that the excited shouts turned to horrified screams. He looked over his shoulder at his tattered stubs of wings and felt an unpleasant, unfamiliar sensation creep up his spine to sicken him.  
He was ashamed.  
He got up and walked away from the frightened humans, no goal in mind, just wandering, dazed and angry.  
The edge of the crater presented him with a problem, as he tried to maneuver his newborn limbs to scale the sharp cliff. Irritated, he opened and closed his hands a few times, imitating the fluttering of his wings when he was upset. This was going to be a long few millenia.

When Sam Winchester was born, he could feel it, a spark lighting beneath his bones, and he rejoiced, celebrating the end of his wandering.  
"Joanne, dear, I'm afraid I have to go." he asked, absentmindedly, already pulling off the apron he wore while bartending. (He'd had to start over again, new identity, new haircut, new degree, after he'd appeared the same for a decade or two)(The last time he was a radical history professor)  
"Nick? What's wrong?" (It amused him, their myths of the Devil, and how they said he'd been cast down to hell. No, just down to the mud, but he'd take their fearful names anyway and laugh.)  
"My...cousin just had a baby, and I want to go and visit the child." He turned and smiled at the dark-haired barista, eyes bright and his hands jittering with the course of adrenaline through his human blood.  
"Alright, fine, but you're going to take my shift some other time, you hear me?" The barista mock-scowled, and Lucifer raised an eyebrow.   
"Mmm."  
There was Grace growing underneath his breastbone, soft and hesitant, fluttering, not enough to fly, so he called a friend, booked a plane to Kansas because it felt like the thing to do and left the next morning. On a different plane, under a different name.  
Nick Warden died tragically on his way to the airport, terrible thing. Bill Buble took a plane to Kansas and hoarded his Grace.

He had not expected to care about the boy. Just looking at the toddler in the dingy motel room, he could feel warmth suffusing his body, and he smiled unconsciously. He'd meant for Sam to die soon, so that Lucifer could return to Heaven sooner, but now, just two years into Sam's mortal life, the thought of his death filled him with fear and anger and a fierce protectiveness.   
He had never meant to become this invested.

  
When Sam was six, Lucifer began to visit his dreams. He'd been invisible before, a vague presence, mute and dismissed as good luck.  
Dean's soul was not as beautiful as Sam's, and it tasted of Michael, but Lucifer found he liked the boy. They shared a few common interests, like keeping Sam safe and happy.   
Sam dreamed of him, and lately monsters.  
"Hello, Sam," he said to the boy, who was playing with a worn action figure in the depths of his sleeping mind. Sam looked up, surprised.  
"Hi! Who are you?"  
"My name is Nick," said Lucifer, and then closed his eyes for a moment, hating himself for the lie. It wasn't his fault his name had such negative repercussions. "I'm an angel."  
"A angel?" Sam said, and brightened. "Dean says angels are watching over me! Do you watch over me?"   
Lucifer smiled, a little helplessly.  
"Yes."  
Sam frowned.  
"Then how come my mommy died?"  
Lucifer's lips tightened, and he bent his head. He hadn't been able to become invisible until Sam was a year old, and he had felt the burning and sorrow of Sam's simple little soul when he was six months old, and when he'd finally been able to go to him and soothe his fears, the boy's mother was dead and his father was on a hunt for vengeance.   
"I...was hurt, at the time, and I couldn't protect you."  
He sent a wordless bit of anger to his Father for allowing his Sam to come to harm. Sam frowned.  
"Oh. Are you better now?"  
"Mostly."  
"Nick?"  
"Yes, Sam?"  
"Could you please watch over Dean, too?"  
Lucifer hesitated, and then knelt, smiling into the boy's eyes.  
"I will do my very best to make sure that you and your brother are safe."  
Sam grinned, a bright grin that covered his entire face and bathed Lucifer in sunlight.   
"Thank you!" he cried, and flung his arms around Lucifer's neck, holding on tightly. Lucifer stiffened for a moment, and then slowly closed his arms around him.  
Sam wriggled free and smiled again, softer.  
"Will you come and talk to me more?" he asked.  
"If you want me to," Lucifer said, a little dazed. Sam nodded violently.  
"Sam!"  
Dean's childish voice and a thump, and Lucifer was cast out of Sam's dream.  
He opened his eyes and smiled.

He was there when Dean told his little brother about monsters, and he was half-expecting the accusing  
"Are you a monster?" that greeted his dreamwalking self that night.  
"No, love. I'm an angel," said Lucifer, suppressing a pang of hurt. "I protect you from the monsters."  
Sam swore and kicked a can. The dreamscape was darker than usual, dingy, littered and abandoned.  
Lucifer raised an eyebrow, but let it pass.  
Sam was eight years old, and his world had gotten harder.

Sam had his first girlfriend when he was ten, and his dreamscape was tainted with her. Lucifer picked through it with his nose wrinkled delicately, watching from the sidelines as Sam replayed memories of her and came up with new scenarios dizzily, and then silently left. He still guarded him during the day though, invisible and intangible, wafting along behind Sam warily.  
He came back when they moved to a new place and Sam's mind was back to normal. He determinedly did not think about the strange possessiveness he exhibited over his Winchester, and he answered Sam's questions with the careful words: "You didn't need me for a while, and now you need me again."

Lucifer jittered and wrapped himself protectively around Sam as the boy clutched white-knuckled onto the gun. He was only twelve, poor little thing, and on his first hunt. He sent dark thoughts towards John Winchester, a hundred miles away, for leaving his children somewhere there was a werewolf.  
A man stumbled out of a barn, screaming for help, and Dean lowered his gun.  
"Mr. Foster!" he yelled. "Are you all right?"  
He obviously couldn't see the eyes and face beneath Mr. Foster's.   
"It's not Mr. Foster," Lucifer whispered into Sam's ear, knowing it was hopeless. Sam never heard him unless he was dreaming. He passed a hand over Sam's eyes, waving, trying to get his attention, and watched Sam's eyes widen. Hope sprang in his stomach, and then Sam fired through him at Mr. Foster, who was currently attempting to eat Dean. Lucifer directed the bullet in a physically improbable shot that went through the werewolf's head, and hugged Sam tightly, shaking, before leaving him to go check on Dean. Bruises on Dean's wrists, those he'd already seen and was attempting to take care of, but Lucifer healed the deep punctures in his throat, to a point, letting them scab over and become superficial.  
"Dean?" said Sam, in a tiny voice. Dean turned and hugged him, kissed his forehead, soothed his trembling.  
"Hey, little brother, it's all right," he said, and Lucifer hated him for a second, envying his ability to comfort Sam.

A few days later the boy didn't come back from a trip to the store, and Sam sat in the middle of Dean's bed with his knees drawn up to his chest and prayed under his breath, not directed at anyone in particular, just mumbles of "Please, please, please let him be okay, I don't know what I'll do if he's not okay, please." Then, a little awkwardly, "Nick, I don't know if you're real or not, but please make sure Dean is okay."  
Lucifer sat absolutely still as the words of the prayer sang through him.  
"Oh, Sam." He leaned forward and pressed an intangible kiss to his forehead. "I'll be back soon."  
He cast out tendrils of Grace, seeking the unique, bright taste of Dean's soul, and located him not too far away at a boy's home. He stood for thirty minutes or so, watching him and monitoring Sam simultaneously. Dean was fine. He was happy, and a normal teenager for once in his life.   
He told Sam so when he finally fell asleep at one-o-clock in the morning, smiling, and watched his shoulders relax. He nodded a few times. "Okay. I'll call Dad tomorrow, have him come pick me up."  
And then he hugged Lucifer, and Lucifer pressed into his touch like he always did, needy and a bit ashamed.  
He wasn't sure how to feel when Dean came back.

He stopped dreamwalking when Sam went to college, allowing him his chance to be normal. Instead he re-solidified himself, built a new identity as Nick Wesson, and worked at a garage, using the skills that John had taught Dean once. Always, though, he had a tendril of grace wrapped around Sam's heart, listening. There were minor ups and downs, and then Sam fell in love with a girl named Jess, and was so happy that the pang of irrational jealousy that always rose when someone other than Lucifer made Sam happy was easily squelched, and he even managed a sort of grudging respect and admiration for Jess.   
Sam was almost graduated when Lucifer felt the wild surge of love and adrenaline and anger, and dropped his book, teleporting to where Sam was and barely remembering to become invisible.  
Dean was back in the picture.  
"Dad's on a hunting trip, and he hasn't been home in a few days," he said, and Lucifer turned to see Sam's reaction. Sam's face went closed off and hard, and Lucifer stopped listening, paralyzed by how handsome his Winchester had gotten. His eyes tracked over the boy's--man's face and body, and he cast a look at Jess, scrutinizing her. Jealousy surged, and he teleported home and into solidity, shaken.

He felt it when Jess died, grief and horror staining Sam's soul like nothing had ever done before, and Lucifer began to dreamwalk again, quietly soothing his nightmares, dwindling the fear and wild grief into happy memories and regret and pervasive sorrow. During the day he hunted like the boys, but more directly, snatching demons and interrogating them and slaughtering them. He found out that the one who'd hurt his Sam was a demon called Azazel, apparently an angel that had decided to take Lucifer's blasphemy a little farther and had tormented and laughed over humans until his soul was broken and dark. He bitterly regretted how far that first rebellion had come, and when he interrogated the next demon, he put a hand against its head and spent six hours rooting around in its head, cleansing memories of torture and stitching together fragments of soul, scrubbing the filth and soot of hell out of its head. The meatsuit was dead, but he healed it, changed its face slightly, and pushed the cleansed soul back inside. The demon opened her eyes, sat up swiftly, and began to cry, hugging herself and rocking back and forward.   
"Thank you, my Lord," she whispered, grabbing at his jacket and sobbing into it. Lucifer felt a bit uncomfortable, looking up and away from her tearful face, her soul not as bright as a human's but also not the dark, charred little hull that it used to be. Guilt pervaded his soul. Three thousand years and this was the first time he had thought to do this?

When he learned of the demon blood, and figured out the source of the spiderwebs of darkness that pulsed in Sam's core, his anger knew no bounds. He obliterated the demon who had told him and raged, thunder and lightning striking around him and his wings spread and casting huge shadows on the earth with every flash of light. He decimated a square mile of forest, pounding and screaming, wracked with anger and guilt and rebellious fury at his Father for allowing his love to come to harm, before another thunderous voice told him enough.  
He whirled to see his brother, and the thunderclouds died away. For a moment he was Sam, seeing his big brother for the first time in a long time, and he flung himself at Michael, hugging him tightly and grinning.  
"I've missed you, brother!" he said, fiercely, and then paused as Michael disentangled himself, awkwardly, and stood at attention a short distance away, his meatsuit's face emotionless and stony.   
"Michael?" he said, cautiously, reaching out a tentative hand.  
"You are embarrassing yourself, Lucifer," said Michael, coldly. "Sam Winchester was meant to be your true vessel, before you fell. You have given him inordinate importance."   
Lucifer looked down at the form his Father had given him, which looked nothing like Sam, and then back at his brother with a raised eyebrow.  
"Yes, well, that was before I fell, Michael."  
"Lucifer, Sam Winchester must die."  
Lucifer's mind went blank.   
"No," he growled, and took a step back.  
"Not only must he die, but he must break the Seals. Only then can you come home to us, brother."  
"Seals? What Seals?"  
"After you were cast down, Father told us in private of the Seals that Sam must break so you can come home. Gates that can only be opened by the most wretched of men."  
"No! No! Sam is good and bright and beautiful. He is my Morningstar, brother, I cannot let him die."  
"He is only mortal, Lucifer."  
Lucifer straightened, going suddenly cold, heart breaking and freezing.   
"I will not allow you to harm him," he said, softly. "I would kill you, brother, before allowing you to kill him."  
Michael rocked back on his heels, his face showing emotion for the first time, shock and hurt. His eyes narrowed.   
"So be it," he said, and pressed a palm to Lucifer's forehead.

He awoke as the Cage sealed itself, and for a moment he thought his eyes were still shut. It was dark, and he was floating in an abyss, isolated, unable to hear anything but his own heartbeat or feel anything but his own skin. He could see nothing, smell nothing, taste nothing. He floated in his own mind, paralyzed, oppressed, until Michael came in with a sword and began to cut at him, making him scream out in pain. Sam died before his eyes, killed by his brother, and, in quick succession, so did Dean and Joanne and every friend he'd ever made, stretching back over hundreds of lifetimes. His wings began to wilt, and he watched as the feathers fell off to reveal only muscle and blood and bone and then as his Grace was eaten by Leviathan and he was unmade, only for it all to begin again, over and over and over, differently each time, and then Sam was the one who skinned him and whispered cruelties into his ears and Lucifer rejected that with every ounce of his being because Sam could never hurt him, because he loved Sam and even the possibility of it being real would break him, and for a moment he learned that it was not real, and was back to the isolation. Then the Cage changed and Michael was back, thrusting hot coals down his throat.   
He spent an eternity in torment, and he had no sense of time, only endless pain. Slowly, though, he learned to distance himself from the pain.

And then there was a lessening and a bell and he was spat onto the floor of a church, and lay gasping, wrecked, spasming on the floor in remembered pain. He opened his eyes and then shut them again, raising a weak hand against the light, and heard a sucked-in breath. His eyes opened again.  
"Sam--" he managed, at the blurry person in front of him, and blacked out.

He woke in another cage, this one made of salt and iron and holy fire, and breathed a shuddering sigh of relief. He was out of the darkness, Sam had let him out, Sam was safe.  
The door creaked open and he looked up, watching mutely as Sam entered.   
Sam looked older, his hair was longer, his face more lined and scarred. Behind him was Dean and an angel in a long coat. Lucifer straightened and narrowed his eyes at the angel, before turning back to look at Sam.  
"Who are you?" Sam asked, guardedly. Lucifer tilted his head to the side and smiled.  
"My name is Lucifer. It's nice to finally meet you in the flesh."  
He couldn't stop smiling, helplessly, drinking in the bright, comforting light of Sam's soul.  
Sam looked a bit like he was going through a crisis. His hands were jittering, and Lucifer looked more closely at his soul, running a quick analysis.   
Demon blood. Father damn.   
"Oh Sam--" he said, softly, and began to stand up. Sam flinched, and Lucifer froze, half-crouched, his heart breaking for the thousandth time. "What have you done to yourself?"  
"You're--That whole time, you were real, and you were the fucking devil?"  
Lucifer knelt and bent his head, letting Sam yell.   
"The only lie I have ever told you is that of my name," he said, softly, when Sam paused for breath. "I have never hurt you intentionally, I have only protected you, and every time you grieved I grieved with you. It is not my fault that my name has been demonized."   
"You made the demons! You made Azazel! Azazel was your servant, Nick--Lucifer."  
Lucifer remained silent.   
"Sammy, what is going on?" Dean demanded.  
"Remember that imaginary friend I used to have, when I was little?"  
"Yeah, Nick, your ang-- Fuck."  
"Yeah."  
Sam swayed slightly, and sat down on the floor, waving off his brother's instant helping hand.   
"Azazel was my servant?" Lucifer said.  
"He's dead," said Dean, and grinned unpleasantly. "I shot him in the head."  
"Pity. A quick death was far too merciful for that creature."  
His voice was filled with venom and a dark sort of pleasure, and Sam frowned at him, before turning to Dean.  
"Dean, I'm starting to get withdrawals again," he said, shakily. Lucifer stepped to the very edge of the holy fire circle, then hissed and drew back as his skin started to burn, swatting at his legs.   
"Sam," he said, pleadingly. "Sam, let me help you."  
"You used to take my nightmares away," said Sam, randomly. Lucifer nodded slowly. "You didn't tell me it was you, you didn't even show yourself except on the really bad ones, and you'd tell me it wasn't real, and I'd wake up."  
Lucifer nodded again.   
"Why would you do that?"  
"Because I love you, Sam."  
Dean made a little choking noise and had to sit down beside Sam, gaping like a fish. The angel squinted at Lucifer, and Sam just went blank and stared, some indeterminate emotion in his eyes.   
"Really?" he said.  
"He does seem to be telling the truth," the angel said.  
"Let him out," said Sam, and Lucifer smiled at him softly. The angel waved his hand, and the holy oil fire went out. Lucifer stepped out, and stood still, looking at Sam.  
"May I?" he asked. Sam nodded, and Lucifer stepped forward to rest a hand on his head, sorting through his blood and soul and scouring it of the foul taint of demon blood. He soothed the withdrawal symptoms, and healed the little cuts and sorenesses and burns, and sent a dark little bolt of anger at wherever Ruby was now, and she was lucky she'd died before Lucifer met her because he would have skinned her for what she'd done to his Sam. Sam sighed and leaned into his hand, and Dean hovered with his hand on his gun, scowling. Lucifer brushed his thumb over the lines on Sam's forehead, pointedly ignoring Dean.   
"If you'll allow me, Sam, I'd like to get to know you," he said. Sam nodded slowly against his palm, eyes sliding shut, exhausted.

When Sam was twenty-seven Lucifer kissed him for the first time, hands sliding into his lovely hair, lips slotting over his in a perfect fit. And it was good.


End file.
